Chapter Forty-Two
Through the window of the sheriff’s vehicle, Lance watched the dark landscape roll by. Flurries whizzed past. They stopped at an intersection, and the sheriff turned left when he should have made a right. Where was he taking them?
“Hey,” Lance called through the wire mesh that divided the front and rear seats. “The sheriff’s station is the other direction.”
“We’re not going to the station,” the sheriff said. “You need to be taught a lesson.”
Lance glanced at Morgan.
The sheriff was angry enough to inflict some payback on Lance, but surely King wouldn’t hurt her. Would he?
“Whatever you have in mind for me, drop Morgan somewhere,” Lance said to King’s reflection in the rearview mirror.
King ignored him.
Morgan nudged Lance with her elbow, her eyes wide and worried. But what could Lance do? They were handcuffed in the back of a police car, a place designed specifically to keep people contained.
The landscape became more and more rural. The sheriff turned onto a long country road. Lance snapped to attention. He knew where they were going.
Grey Lake.
A few minutes later, the trees opened. The lake shimmered in the darkness. But the car continued past the area where his father’s Buick had been dragged from the water. Two miles later, the sheriff turned onto a dirt lane in a thick patch of forest. Discomfort shifted to paranoia as the trees closed around the car. The car rolled to a stop. A small clearing opened to their left.
The sheriff stepped out of the vehicle and opened the rear door. “Get out.”
Was he going to leave them out here? He’d taken their coats, and the temperature was hovering around freezing. As far as Lance knew, the closest houses were on the other side of the lake. The hike was at least five miles.
“No.” Lance shook his head. Next to him, Morgan shivered.
The sheriff reached into the car, grabbed her by the arm, and pulled her out of the vehicle.
“Hey,” Lance yelled, anger and terror churning inside him. “Don’t hurt her!”
“Then get your ass out here,” King called, dragging Morgan into the beam of the headlights. Still holding her bicep, King crooked a finger at Lance. Morgan’s face was as pale as the snowflakes swirling around her dark hair.
Lance scrambled out of the car. Whatever the sheriff had planned, Lance couldn’t let Morgan face it alone. He walked across the clearing and stopped in front of the sheriff. King released Morgan’s arm and stepped away from her, toward the car.
“You can’t leave us out here.” Facing the sheriff, Lance put his body between King and Morgan. They were in the middle of nowhere. With the falling temperatures, Morgan wouldn’t make it. Surely, the sheriff knew that.
But King didn’t respond.
“Dispatch will have a record of Stan’s call,” Lance argued. “They’ll know we were with you.”
“Stan didn’t call. Do you really think that dumbass spotted you?” The sheriff snorted. “I was looking for you. You weren’t that hard to find. You’re predictable, and I’m a very good hunter. It’s all about knowing your prey and being able to predict its movements.”
“Sharp will figure it out.” Lance tried to think of an argument, even though it would be futile. The sheriff had already gone beyond the law.
Beyond reason.
“I’m not worried about Sharp,” King said.
Morgan seemed to shake off her shock. “What do you mean, leave us out here? You can’t do that.” The chatter of her teeth punctuated her words.
“I can do whatever I want,” King said in a voice as cold as the falling snow. “But I have no intention of leaving you out here to freeze.”
Lance took a deep breath. What a prick! The frigid air felt like needles in his lungs. Was this all an attempt to intimidate them? To scare them out of ever crossing him again?
Morgan’s whole body was shaking now, and her shoulders hunched against the cold. The misery on her face stoked rage inside Lance’s chest. If the sheriff thought he could get away with a stunt like this with a PI and a lawyer . . .
Wait.
Even the sheriff’s ego wasn’t that big. A PI didn’t have much clout, but a respected lawyer, a former prosecutor, did. Plus, Morgan had connections. Nearly every member of her family was or had been in law enforcement.
“This is kidnapping,” Morgan said in a quivering voice. “You’ll never get away with it.”
No, the sheriff wouldn’t get away with leaving them to hike out of the woods in the cold. He had no intention of letting them hike anywhere. Lance could see it in King’s eyes. A veil of detachment slid down like a curtain. Anger and frustration faded. The cool that replaced emotion in his eyes was stone cold.
He was going to kill them.
But why?
Lance’s belly chilled, as if he’d swallowed snow. He had no time to analyze the sheriff’s motive. Whatever the reasons, Lance could not let Morgan die.
Instead of drawing his service weapon, King reached into his pocket. Lance shifted onto the balls of his feet. The sheriff had a spare gun. Before he cleared it from his pocket, Lance charged him. His shoulder hit the sheriff in the ribs, knocking him off balance. King stumbled backward. Without his arms for balance, Lance went down too. But he was younger and more athletic than the sheriff. He landed on his opposite shoulder and rolled. Momentum carried him back to his feet.
“Morgan, run!” he shouted.
She turned and fled into the woods. The sheriff turned onto his stomach, got one foot under his body, and reached for his weapon again. Lance rushed him again, body slamming him a second time. Prepared, the sheriff stayed on his feet. Lance jumped back and drilled a front kick into his solar plexus, but the sheriff was wearing his body armor, and the kick had little impact, except to throw him off balance one more time.
King recovered quickly and reached for his weapon again, his face a mask of determination.
If he killed Lance, Morgan would be easy to hunt down.
Jumping forward, Lance brought his forehead down onto the sheriff’s nose. Blood squirted, and the sheriff went down on his ass. But King had his gun out of its holster. Before he could aim, Lance kicked his arm and sprinted for the trees.
A gunshot echoed through the woods. The bullet hit a tree a few feet to Lance’s right. A piece of debris struck Lance in the face, but the sting barely lasted a second. He turned around a large pine and zigzagged.
He had two objectives: stay alive and find Morgan.